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Gary Johnson: WIRED Should Have Endorsed Me for President

Gary Johnson waits offstage before speaking at the "Politicon" convention in Pasadena, CA, on June 25, 2016.

Patrick T. Fallon/REUTERS

When I read WIRED's endorsement of Hillary Clinton last month, I thought to myself that WIRED is protesting a bit too much. The piece spends 342 words cataloging the "optimistic libertarianism" of its Silicon Valley founder of the 1990s. It offers not one word about the actual Libertarian Party candidate running for president.

I am that candidate: A two-term Republican governor of New Mexico, a successful entrepreneur who built a company with more than 1,000 employees, and a "fit for life" athlete who has climbed the highest peak on each of the seven continents.

WIRED OPINION

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Gary Johnson (@GovGaryJohnson) is a two-term Republican governor of New Mexico and the Libertarian Party candidate for president. His running mate is former Massachusetts Republican Governor Bill Weld.

Look, I get it: You're afraid of Donald Trump. He represents a perverse strain of America’s protectionist, nativist past. But for political analysis, this year WIRED is only half right: Hillary Clinton is everything that Silicon Valley has been fighting against since Al Gore invented the Internet.

Clinton is most definitively not Uber-everything. She's like the union of taxicab medallion owners fighting to preserve incumbents. She's on record as wanting to crack down on services like Uber that make extensive use of independent contractors.

I am the pro-market, pro-information, and pro-innovation option. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand and according to your own observations, is someone else:

"As secretary of state, her inclination toward military solutions had disastrous consequences in the Middle East."

"The US still has an alarming tendency to try to solve complex foreign policy problems with flying killer robots."

"She seems to favor encryption weak enough for law enforcement to penetrate. That violates basic privacy."
And here's what I'm not, as opposed to your choice:

I've never engaged in influence peddling or pay-to-play.

I don't want to restrict political speech and undermine the First Amendment in the process.

I'm not wedded to the education establishment that wants to stifle innovation and school choice.

I don't want to restrict your gun rights.

I don't believe choosing to use marijuana should be a crime.

And I actually believe in free trade, as opposed to anyone else who will be on the ballot for President in all 50 states.
Here is what you can expect from an administration led by Gov. Gary Johnson and Gov. Bill Weld, my running mate: Experience. A commitment to the Constitution. Humility and honesty, not arrogance about the power of the state.

For example, both of us were successful Republican governors overwhelmingly re-elected in heavily Democratic states. Why? Because we governed in a fiscally conservative and socially inclusive manner. We support a woman's right to choose and same-sex marriage. This approach is what most Americans want.

Both Republicans and Democrats are responsible for the fiscal mess that we find ourselves in today. President George W. Bush doubled our national debt, from $5.7 trillion to $10 trillion. President Barack Obama is on track to double it again, with our federal government's debt currently standing at $19.3 trillion. That is simply unsustainable.

You and I know that there is a better way. I reduced the size of state government by 1,000 employees through attrition, cut taxes 14 times, and vetoed more than 750 bills—as well as literally thousands of budget line items. Yet I was able to provide essential state government services and infrastructure, including highways, bridges, schools, and hospitals, and still leave office with a billion-dollar surplus.

This will be our priority in the first 100 days of the Johnson-Weld administration: Presenting a balanced budget to Congress and forcing them to justify their deficit spending. We'll present savings of roughly 20 percent in order to match current tax receipts. It's possible to cut government spending, simplify and lower taxes, and still provide needed government services.

But Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won't be able to, because they each promise lavish new spending. In particular, both of them rule out changes to Social Security and Medicare. Suggesting that spending can be brought under control without dealing with those programs is just a lie. It can’t be done—and they know it. As I did with Medicaid as Governor, there are ways to put Social Security and Medicare on a solvent footing without denying needed benefits to future generations.

Market-based innovation is what we need to deal with challenges such as health care and climate change, not more government command-and-control.

Even on immigration, which WIRED points to as a reason for favoring Clinton over Trump, she falls flat. Building a wall and deporting 11 million immigrants is crazy. But Clinton would do nothing to address a system for legal immigration that simply doesn't work.

We have artificial quotas. We have "caps" on certain categories of workers that have no real relationship to the realities of the free market. Even for those from the right countries or with the right skills, our bureaucracy makes it ridiculously slow and cumbersome to come here legally.

Governor Weld and I will change that and implement a system with no caps, no categories, and no quotas. Just a straightforward background check, the paperwork to obtain a real Social Security number and to work legally. Border enforcement will become a job of keeping out real criminals and would-be terrorists.

Contrary to what typical politicians would have you believe, the federal government isn't here to solve all our problems. Government should exist to protect our freedom and opportunity to find our own solutions and only become involved when threats to our safety and property are beyond our own capacity to handle. Our Constitution enumerates and limits the power of the federal government. Our political system works best when states, non-profits, businesses, and mediating institutions use their own initiative and govern themselves.

That's why we promise freedom and liberty, not a dictator or a technocrat.